John Ruskin

“ No army ever fought in better cause, or with more united heart. And accordingly they meet with no check, and commit no error; from tower to tower of the field fortresses,—from gate to gate of the great cities,—they march in one continuous and daily more splendid triumph, yet in gentle and perfect discipline; and now, when they have entered Volterra with her fugitives, after stress of battle, not a drop of blood is shed, nor a single house pillaged, nor is any other condition of peace required than the exile of the Ghibelline nobles. ”

“ In which you see there is not a trace of Gothic feeling or design of any sort. No crockets, no pinnacles, no foils, no vaultings, no grotesques in sculpture. Panels between pillars, panels carried on pillars, sculptures in those panels like the Metopes of the Parthenon; a Greek vase in the middle, and griffins in the middle of that. Here is your font, not at all of Saint John, but of profane and civil-engineering John. This is his manner of baptism of the town of Perugia. ”

“ What subject of extended inquiry have we in this word, ranging from the cementless clefts between the couchant stones of the walls of the kings of Rome, whose iron rivets you had but the other day placed in your hands by their discoverer, through the grip of the stones of the Tower of the Death-watch, to the subtle joints in the marble armour of the Florentine Baptistery!
Our own work must certainly be left with a rough surface at this place, and we will fit the edges of it to our next piece of study as closely as we may. ”

“ John Lateran at Rome, you have Greek work, if not contemporary with this at Pisa, yet occupying a parallel place in the history of architecture, which is abortive, and monstrous beyond the power of any words to describe. Vasari knew no difference between these two kinds of Greek work. Nor do your modern architects. To discern the difference between the sculpture of the font of Pisa, and the spandrils of the Lateran cloister, requires thorough training of the hand in the finest methods of draughtsmanship; and, secondly, trained habit of reading the mythology and ethics of design. ”

“ But when I oppose these two words, Gothic and Greek, don't run away with the notion that I necessarily mean to oppose Christian and Greek. You must not confuse Gothic blood in a man's veins, with Christian feeling in a man's breast. There are unconverted and converted Goths; unconverted and converted Greeks. The Greek and Gothic temper is equally opposed, where the name of Christ has never been uttered by either, or when every other name is equally detested by both. ”

“ A vulgar sculptor would have cut all black behind the head; Giovanni begins with full shadow; then subdues it with drapery absolutely quiet in fall; then lays his fullest possible light on the head, the hand, and the edge of the lifted veil.
He has undercut his Madonna's profile, being his main aim, too delicately for time to spare; happily the deep-cut brow is left, and the exquisitely refined line above, of the veil and hair. The rest of the work is uninjured, and the sharpest edges of light are still secure. ”

“ Utter franchise, utter gentleness in theological thought. Instead of, 'This is the faith, which except a man believe faithfully, he cannot be saved,' 'This is the love, which if a bird or an insect keep faithfully, it shall be saved.'
Gentlemen, you have at present arrived at a phase of natural science in which, rejecting alike the theology of the Byzantine, and the affection of the Frank, you can only contemplate a bird as flying under the reign of law, and a cricket as singing under the compulsion of caloric. ”

“ Observe, I am not saying how far this feeling, be it faith, or be it imagination, is true or false;—I only desire you to note that the power of all Christian work begins in the niche of the catacomb and depth of the sarcophagus, and is to the end definable as architecture of the tomb.
30. Not altogether, and under every condition, sanctioned in doing such honour to the dead by the Master of it. Not every grave is by His command to be worshipped. Graves there may be—too little guarded, yet dishonourable;—"ye are as graves that appear not, and the men that walk over them are not aware of them." ”

“ But the investiture of the lily of Florence with scarlet is a symbol,—unintentional, observe, but not the less notable,—of the recovery of human sense and intelligence in this matter. The reign of war was past; this was the sign of it;—the red glow, not now of the Towers of Dis, but of the Carita, "che appena fora dentro al fuoco nota." And a day is coming, be assured, when the kings of Europe will dress their peaceful troops beautifully; will clothe their peasant girls "in scarlet, with other delights," and "put on ornaments of gold upon their apparel;" ”

“ And as to absolute massacre, I do not suppose a child feels so much pain in being killed as a full-grown man, and its life is of less value to it. No pain either of body or thought through which you could put an infant, would be comparable to that of a good son, or a faithful lover, dying slowly of a painful wound at a distance from a family dependent upon him, or a mistress devoted to him. But the victories of Charles, and the massacres, taken in sum, would not give a muster-roll of more than twenty thousand dead; men, women, and children counted all together. ”

“ III. The usurer's fang, and the debtor's shame, might both have been trodden down under the feet of Italy, had her knights and her workmen remained true to each other. But the brotherhoods of Italy were not of Cain to Abel—but of Cain to Cain. Every man's sword was against his fellow. Pisa sank before Genoa at Meloria, the Italian Ægos-Potamos; Genoa before Venice in the war of Chiozza, the Italian siege of Syracuse. Florence sent her Brunelleschi to divert the waves of Serchio against the walls of Lucca; Lucca her Castruccio, to hold mock tournaments before the gates of vanquished Florence. ”

“ Do you not begin to wonder a little more what manner of man this Nicholas was, who so obediently throws down the towers which offend the Ghibelliues, and so skilfully puts up the pinnacles which please the Guelphs? A passive power, seemingly, he;—plastic in the hands of any one who will employ him to build, or to throw down. On what exists of evidence, demonstrably in these years here is the strongest brain of Italy, thus for six shilling a day doing what it is bid. ”

“ The Greek nation has been dead in heart upwards of a thousand years; its religion dead, for six hundred. But through the wreck of its faith, and death in its heart, the skill of its hands, and the cunning of its design, instinctively linger. In the centuries of Christian power, the Christians are still unable to build but under Greek masters, and by pillage of Greek shrines; and their best workman is only an apprentice to the 'Graeculi esurientes' who are carving the temple of St. John. ”

“ Now there are two most notable characteristics about this Cyclopean architecture to which I beg your close attention.
The first: that as the laying of stones is so beautiful, their joints become a subject of admiration, and great part of the architectural ornamentation is in the beauty of lines of separation, drawn as finely as possible. Thus the separating lines of the bricks at Siena, of this gate at Lucca, of the vault at Verona, of this window at Orvieto, and of the contemporary refectory at Furness Abbey, are a main source of the pleasure you have in the building. ”

“ My own better acquaintance with the laws of gravity and of statics did not enable me, myself, to build six inches of dyke that would stand; and all the decoration possible under the circumstances consisted in turning the lichened sides of the stones outwards. And yet the noblest conditions of building in the world are nothing more than the gradual adornment, by play of the imagination, of materials first arranged by this natural instinct of adjustment. You must not lose sight of the instinct of building, but you must not think the play of the imagination depends upon it. ”

“ He indulgently corrects Giovanni, and Adam and Eve have entirely orthodox one-eighth heads, by rule of schools.
But how of Eve's sharp-cut nose and pointed chin, thin lips, and look of quiet but rather surprised attention—not specially reverent, but looking keenly out from under her eyelids, like a careful servant receiving an order?
Well—those are all Giovanni's own notions;—not the least classical, nor scientific, nor even like a pretty, sentimental modern woman. Like a Florentine woman—in Giovanni's time—it may be; at all events, very certainly, what Giovanni thought proper to carve. ”

“ But all the knightly pride of Claverhouse himself is knit together, in Charles, with fearless faith, and religious wrath. "This Saracen scum, led by a bastard German, —traitor to his creed, usurper among his race,—dares it look me, a Christian knight, a prince of the house of France, in the eyes? Tell the Sultan of Nocera, to-day I put him in hell, or he puts me in paradise."
They are not passionate words neither; any more than hypocritical ones. They are measured, resolute, and the fewest possible. ”

“ I spoke to you first of Horace's modesty. All piety begins in modesty. You must feel that you are a very little creature, and that you had better do as you are bid. You will then begin to think what you are bid to do, and who bids it. And you will find, unless you are very unhappy indeed, that there is always a quite clear notion of right and wrong in your minds, which you can either obey or disobey, at your pleasure. ”

“ Of the inferior agricultural labourers, employed on the farms of the nobles and richer ecclesiastics, I find nowhere due notice, nor does any historian seriously examine their manner of life. Liable to every form of robbery and oppression, I yet regard their state as not only morally but physically happier than that of riotous soldiery, or the lower class of artizans, and as the safeguard of every civilized nation, through all its worst vicissitudes of folly and crime. Nature has mercifully appointed that seed must be sown, and sheep folded, whatever lances break, or religions fail ”

“ You will not understand how the peace comes, nor even in what it consists. It is the peace that passes understanding;—it is just as visionary and imaginative as love is, and just as real, and just as necessary to the life of man. ”

“ The increase of wealth, the safety of industry, and the conception of more convenient furniture of life, to which we must attribute the rise of the entire artist class, were accompanied, in that century, by much enlargement in the conception of useful public works: and—not by private enterprise,—that idle persons might get dividends out of the public pocket,—but by public enterprise,—each citizen paying down at once his share of what was necessary to accomplish the benefit to the State,—great architectural and engineering efforts were made for the common service. ”

“ As natural form is varied, so must beautiful ornament be varied. You are not an artist by reproving nature into deathful sameness, but by animating your copy of her into vital variation. But I thought at that time that only Goths were rightly changeful. I never thought Greeks were. Their reserved variation escaped me, or I thought it accidental. Here, however, is a coin of the finest Greek workmanship, which shows you their mind in this matter unmistakably. ”

“ Conceive Italy then always in these four masses: Lombardy, Etruria, Romagna, Calabria.
Now she has three great external powers to deal with: the western, France—the northern, Germany—the eastern, Arabia. On her right the Frank; on her left the Saracen; above her, the Teuton. And roughly, the French are a religious chivalry; the Germans a profane chivalry; the Saracens an infidel chivalry. What is best of each is benefiting Italy; what is worst, afflicting her. And in the time we are occupied with, all are afflicting her. ”

“ You will find in the fourth of my inaugural lectures, at the 98th paragraph, this statement,—much denied by modern artists and authors, but nevertheless quite unexceptionally true,—that the entire vitality of art depends upon its having for object either to state a true thing, or adorn a serviceable one. The two functions of art in Italy, in this entirely liberal and virescent phase of it,—virgin art, we may call it, retaining the most literal sense of the words virga and virgo,—are to manifest the doctrines of a religion which now, for the first time, men had soul enough to understand ”

“ I am about to ask you to read the hieroglyphs upon the architecture of a dead nation, in character greatly resembling our own,—in laws and in commerce greatly influencing our own;—in arts, still, from her grave, tutress of the present world. ”

“ You will find that while men who desire to be virtuous receive it as the mother of virtues, men who desire to be criminal receive it as the forgiver of crimes; and that therefore, between Ghibelline or Infidel cruelty, and Guelph or Christian cruelty, there is always this difference,—that the Infidel cruelty is done in hot blood, and the Christian's in cold. ”

“ A man with all the fire of France in him, all the faith, and all the insolence; incapable of doubting a single article of his creed, or relaxing one tittle of his authority; destitute alike of reason and of pity; and absolutely merciless either to an infidel, or an enemy. The young Prince Manfred, bastard son of Frederick II., now representing the main power of the German empire, was both; and against him the Pope brought into Italy a religious French knight, of character absolutely like his own, Charles of Anjou. ”